computing with characters

[cokofreedom]

An obviously independent cause of uglyness is the inconsistency of eg
','.split() and ','.join()

Cheers, BB

I tend to do ", ".join("%s" % e for e in item)

Is there any difference between this and str()?

 

[Gabriel Genellina]

I tend to do ", ".join("%s" % e for e in item)

Is there any difference between this and str()?

Use the timeit module to measure performance:

C:\TEMP>python -m timeit "for i in xrange(10000): str(i)"
10 loops, best of 3: 81.8 msec per loop

C:\TEMP>python -m timeit "for i in xrange(10000): '%s' % i"
10 loops, best of 3: 78.5 msec per loop

The %s version consistently wins in my system -2.5.1 on WinXP- for a wide range of inputs.